It’s happening to an increasing number of people of a certain age. It happens late in the prime of working life and just when you think you’ve got a solid nest egg for retirement, you lose your job.

Losing a job late in life is not a rare experience; older workers find more challenges than their younger counterparts in trying to get back to the workforce, if ever, and certainly not at their
previous level.

“I have seen an alarming number of my friends’ parents being laid off,” says Kelley Long, a spokeswoman for the National CPA Financial Literacy Commission, certified financial planner and director of communications and marketing for Chicago-based accounting firm Shepard Schwartz & Harris.

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First, congratulations! If you believe the statistics consider yourself lucky to have overcome seriously competitive odds.  This real opportunity lets you put in place a few basic retirement goals.  The earlier you do it the easier it gets.

College graduates who are about to begin their careers will face an overwhelming number of financial choices, including how best to save for retirement.

The newly employed have one or more retirement account options from which to choose, including Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, and traditional 401(k) plans, that may or may not have a Roth 401(k) option, say the authors of a new paper on the subject.

Many young workers likely have employers that provide a matching contribution, according Gregory Geisler, an associate professor of accounting at the University of Missouri Saint Louis and Jerry Stern, a professor of accounting at Indiana University-Bloomington.

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